In the year 1940, during the times of the World War 2, Donald L. Hings in collaboration with the then pioneer company Motorola engineered a device walkie talkie with the intent to provide a medium of wireless communication to the army personnel. The walkie talkie, a combination of two clipped words “walking” and “talking” worked in the same way that a landline phone did, except that it was wireless. This idea of a radio not just proved to be a hit, it was revolutionary for the military and law-enforcing agencies. Therefore, today when the world is entering a digital age, the need to transform analog radio to the digital one is still valid for which a digital walkie talkie has been produced. In the below article we will discuss what a digital walkie talkie actually is, what are its advantages and how it’s different from the prior analog radio sets.
What is a Digital Walkie Talkie, how it’s different than analog:
Conventional analog radio is used to build a two-way communication, for sending and receiving the data. However, the digital walkie talkie covers a wide range of current age communication demands while maintaining the privacy that none other device does.
Good Coverage:
What after all is the purpose of using any kind of radio, to send a message from one place to another, yet no matter how good quality radio you use, if it doesn’t have adequate coverage, the entire intent of using a wireless device fails. Coverage is an area where the digital walkie talkie system clearly trumps the analog. The service with the former is perceived to be 20% times better than the latter, and the main reason for analog’s failure to provide better coverage is that signals weaken when they are put on an analog operating system. There appears too much distortion during the analog usage, the receiver hears a great deal of crackle and sizzle sounds on analog radio compared to the digital walkie talkie. A digital radio is your savior from all such hassles, you do not experience this level of distortion while the message is sent or received, because the digital walkie talkie works in a wide range area and has an innate ability to enable a better reception and audio quality. This is the reason behind the excellent performance of digital two-way radio by 20% than the analog.
Optional Encrypted Communication:
As the digital walkie talkies unlike the analog ones communicate with the exchange of data with one another. The digital radios have the ability to run on a system that can be externally downloaded. These 40-bit or 256-bit AES key module help in the encryption of data on the radio.
As the prime users of the two way radios have been the military personnel, the digital walkie talkie and the downloadable feature of encryption in the system gives it a great advantage over the analog radios. In current times, when many software hobbyists keep attempting to hack data from different messaging software like Whatsapp, Facebook, and Skype, digital radio remains to be a safer option. No third party can interfere or listen to a private conversation taking place between two parties. The de-encryption can only be done by an intelligence agency with certain legal rights to use technology, otherwise, it is near to impossible for a common person to do so in real time.
While on the other hand, analog radio communication can easily be listened to by tuning into the same frequency with a radio scanner. Some companies offer voice inversion scramblers, but all these scramblers do is muffle the sound on the audio which can be conveniently interpreted by any third party. To cut it short, the analog radios aren’t as user-friendly in terms of privacy as the digital radios. That is why if the agenda is to keep the contents of your audio discreet, there is no way you should opt for an analog radio over the digital system.
Where Motorola stands as one of the pioneer brands for radios, digital walkie talkies have been launched by many other brands like Kenwood as well.
GPS enabled Digital Walkie Talkie services
This distinct feature in the digital radio lets you broadcast your real-time location to the person on the other side. With this feature, the caller can broadcast his location and call for help from the receiver, the person on the other hand, the receiver can immediately look at the LCD of his radio screen and follow the map to get to the exact location where help is required.
Last word
In times, where innovation is continuously on the rise and privacy is the biggest matter of concern from great powers to a common man, the use of digital walkie talkie is the future. It’s a great combination of the conventional two-way communication method with a hint of the contemporary digitization. The pros of digital radios definitely trump the pros of the analog radios in this age.
